Why It’s Time to Move Beyond Homegrown IAM

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the traditional approach of building homegrown identity and access management (IAM) systems has shifted from being a competitive advantage to a liability due to changing internet architectures and threat models. While such systems focused primarily on access control, modern platforms like Ory redefine IAM by treating identity as a structured system of record rather than merely a security mechanism. This shift enables organizations to generate reliable identity signals at scale, supporting diverse needs across marketing and data science while maintaining security and compliance. Unlike homegrown solutions, which often lead to fragmented and underutilized identity data, Ory’s API-first architecture facilitates global workloads and real-time access patterns, thus enhancing understanding and intelligence in AI-driven and automated environments. The move towards platforms like Ory is driven not by the failure of existing systems but by the need to align with contemporary demands, reducing the technical debt and maintenance costs associated with outdated IAM solutions.